


I Put a Spell on You

by reverseblackholeofwords, RubberSoles19



Series: Devil May Care [7]
Category: Nerdy Nummies, Supernatural, natewantstobattle
Genre: Gen, alright, alright?, because these two need a chance to be better friends, just a little friendship bonding, over surviving witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24440095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reverseblackholeofwords/pseuds/reverseblackholeofwords, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubberSoles19/pseuds/RubberSoles19
Summary: After leaving Caliente, Idaho in the dust and spending a few short days with the Patrick's, Nate heads to the Roadhouse, only to find the place nearly abandoned. Something wicked is trying to put Rosanna out of business, and she and Nate will have to work together despite their rocky past.
Relationships: Nathan Sharp & Rosanna Pansino
Series: Devil May Care [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646251
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	I Put a Spell on You

When Nate arrived at the Roadhouse, he could instantly sense that something was off about the old hunters’ watering hole. The last he’d seen of the place - before he and Matt’s most recent brush with dear old Freddy Fazbear - it was hopping post-ghost-car, all the local hunters returning to their favorite dive now that there was no threat of them being run off the road for their infidelity. Now, however, the place was deathly quiet at mid-day, the sun scorching overhead.

Nate let himself in the front door and looked around.

Not a soul, not even giant Jimmy, seemed to be occupying the place. The jukebox in the corner sat silent and lonely while a hoard of flies buzzed in the stagnant air, and Nate got a feeling in his gut that he always associated with impending bad news. He cleared his throat. “El Pansino? You home?”

He’d seen the telltale cherry red Jeep parked out back when he'd driven up. Surely she was there somewhere, not that he could hear a peep in the whole building. Nate set his bag down on one of the many empty tables, made his way around the bar, to the back hall that led to the few rooms Ro reserved for her friends and guests to bunk for the night. But a little poking around still did not reveal the location of the Roadhouse’s frisky owner. Not until he snuck his way into the kitchen did Nate finally find her.

“Ro?”

She stood with her back to him, shoulders trembling, but at the sound of his voice, she quickly brushed her fingers through her auburn hair to comb it into place before turning around to face him. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her face pale and without her usual flawless makeup. It startled Nate to say the least, to see her without her warpaint on.

“Nathan! Why you little rascal, you didn’t tell me you were coming!” Even feigning her usual sunny-side-up attitude, Nate could tell by the tremor in her voice that something was wrong. She twisted her hands around the fly-swatter she was holding, and it looked like she might just bend it in half at any moment.

Nate felt the distinct need to reach for his knife but thought better of it. She already looked like a spooked deer in headlights, and Nate didn’t want to make matters worse. “Yeah sorry about that, Matt and I got back from a hunt a few days ago, and I thought I’d see if you had any work for me. I would’ve called, but...” But he still wasn’t sure that Ro didn’t hate his guts and only pretended to be nice for Matthew’s sake.

But now he was less concerned with that and more concerned with the fact that Ro looked like she’d seen a ghost - or in her case, something much, much worse. Nate drew a few steps closer as his eyes scanned the room for signs of a threat. “Ro, is everything alright?”

“Yes, yes, everything is fine. Everything is…” Rosanna started tearing up, and when she did, she waved her hands in front of her face as if to fan the tears away. It was then that Nate saw that she was standing in front of something on the floor, shielding it from his view partially, and upon closer inspection, he saw what he thought was a large, leather bag.

“Oh, Nate!” she finally cried as the tears spilled over, and she smacked him in the arm with the fly-swatter as she asked, “Why couldn’t you call first?” Two more smacks with the final two words, but Nate barely reacted to that as he watched her crumble in on herself.

He made some lame excuse about his phone battery being dead as he stood beside Ro and looked down at the thing on the floor. It was indeed a large leather bag, but the bag itself was not half as disconcerting as what was just poking out of the opening of it.

A gray, hairy, severed goat’s head, its tongue purple and lolling from its mouth and its yellow eyes with rectangular pupils gazing emptily up at the ceiling. Flies danced across its teeth and eyes. 

“Ro, what the hell?” Nate asked, almost inaudible.

She set the fly-swatter aside, swept her hands across her cheeks, and straightened the light pink blouse that she wore beneath her apron. “It’s not the first thing that’s turned up, but…” Ro took a deep breath, composing herself again. “I wasn’t expecting anymore of them, not since I sent everyone away. I thought maybe it was just a hunter playing some nasty tricks because I gave him a cold shoulder, or _something_. But, I never would’ve thought-”

A sob cut her off then, and Nate instinctively reached to put an arm around her, his gaze still fixed on the goat’s head. Whether or not Ro liked him, she turned from the heinous thing on her floor to wrap her arms around Nate’s torso and squeezed tight until he could barely force a breath into his lungs. Nate was a little surprised at the gesture, but he didn’t object.

“It started as hex bags, just little bad luck charms, nothing too dangerous,” she muttered. “I really didn’t think anything of it, not a thing, but I’ve tried! I’ve tried to spot who it was leaving them, and I never catch them. I’m at my whit’s end, Nate. I don’t know what else to do!”

Nate blinked a few times. Whatever this was, it had to have worn Ro down quite a bit for her to confide in him of all people. That or she simply had no one else to turn to at that point, which, judging by the empty bar room, Nate figured was the more likely of the two, but if she couldn’t feel safe in her own home, well, that would drive anyone to the brink.

He leaned back a bit. “Doesn’t the Roadhouse have security cameras or something? Even just one?”

Ro actually snorted at that, regaining a little of the color in her face as she finally began to calm down again. “Nothing that’s been used within the last decade. I tried making it work, but I’m a baker, not a... tech... person.” She huffed and scrubbed the sleeve of her blouse over her face once more to dry the last of her tears. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin!”

“Well,” Nate said with a smirk, “it’s your lucky day, ma’am, because _security_ just so happens to be my business.” He took a bit of a sarcastic bow, and that brought a smile back to Ro’s face as she rolled her eyes.

Nate wasn't her first choice of people to help with the situation, Ro had to admit. He might not even be the fourth or fifth, but it's not like she had a lot of options either. So, she crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. There was the Ro that Nate knew. “Oh, really? You were a minimum wage security guard at Freddy’s for, what - less than a week - and that makes you an expert or something?”

“Or something,” Nate said belligerently, scoffing and throwing his arms out to either side of himself. “And I survived all five nights!” He raised a finger at her. “Do you want my help nabbing this nutjob or not? Because witches are my specialty too, you know.”

Ro’s confidence wavered again, and she twisted her hands together. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Nothing has been safe here lately. The water tank exploded, the kitchen has caught fire - oh, I’ve lost count how many times - and just two days ago, these flies started swarming in the whole place.” She covered her mouth with her hand like she might start crying again, but she didn’t. Ro straightened her shoulders a little, raising her chin. Without her usual high heels on, the top of her head barely came to the level of Nate's shoulders, but she looked no less fearsome as she warned him, "I just want you to know what you're getting yourself into."

Even when she was running him out of her bar with a broom, Nate had always admired Ro, her strength and tact at dealing with even the most stubborn of hunters, and now he was seeing that strength on full display. Something like this would’ve driven any normal person to insanity, sent them running for the hills, but Ro still managed to hold herself together. And she wasn’t going to give up on the Roadhouse without a fight.

“Oh, I won’t do it for free,” Nate teased her, winning a sharp glare in response. “I’m going to need a room for a few nights, and you know I could eat _anyone_ out of house and home…”

She couldn’t help but mirror his cocky smirk. Really, deep down she was thrilled to have someone else there. After she’d sent everyone else away, the loneliness had haunted just as much as anything else, and now she’d have help catching whoever was leaving these hexes for her. So they spent the whole afternoon getting the security cameras up and running again, Nate changing out the old wiring for new and even climbing up on a ladder to clean off the lenses that had been caked in dirt and grime over the years.

By the time night fell, he’d hooked up Ro’s old clunker of a laptop to be a monitor for the different displays, and he could click through each one to see the entire perimeter of the Roadhouse. He’d even rigged up a very simple program that would alert them when one of the cameras picked up movement, one he’d used in his Freddy’s days.

“Now, we sit and wait,” Nate said as he kicked up his feet on the table they’d set up as their command center of sorts.

Ro yawned a bit. She looked like she hadn’t been getting her usual quota of beauty sleep recently, but Nate hoped that it wouldn’t be a problem for much longer. She rose from her seat and stretched. “Well, you man the cameras for a bit, and I’ll see if I can’t rustle us up something to eat. How does that sound?”

Nate’s stomach growled in reply, and he patted it. “Sounds good to me!”

He watched her slip in the direction of the kitchen and settled back in his chair. It was probably going to be a long night, if he had to guess. So maybe he could coax her into letting him take the night shift while she dozed. In the meantime, he checked his phone for messages from Andy. Stein had been missing some of his check-ins that they’d discussed before he left for Vegas. As long as Andy was updating him about the hunt frequently, Nate didn’t have to worry, but those messages had been coming fewer and further between lately.

Nate just hoped that he wouldn’t get the one message all hunters dreaded. Or worse, he may just never hear from him ever again.

By the time Nate had almost decided to call Andy, Ro was back with her famous buffalo wings, and, “Special just for you, some of my peanut butter cookies!” She set the plate down in front of him along with a tall glass of milk.

Nate dropped his phone back onto the table, his call to Andy all but forgotten, and started eating his dessert first. Ro nibbled anxiously on her own plate of wings, not even noticing when she dropped a dollop of ranch dressing on her skirt while she watched the screen for any hint of movement.

When he stopped stuffing his face long to notice her odd behavior, Nate bumped his shoulder against hers. “We’re going to catch them, okay? Probably just some low-level, Sabrina the Teenage Witch trying to earn her stripes by annoying the crap out of you.”

That seemed to soothe Ro’s nerves a bit, and she went back to nibbling at her food before finally saying, “I’m not worried about me, you know. Whatever they do, I can take it, but this place means something to people. It’s a safe haven, and I don’t pretend it's important. It’s just… duct tape and a bunch of termites holding hands that's keeping the place together.” She chuckled and shook her head. “But it’s mine.”

Wiping his mouth and fingers on one of the napkins that Ro brought with her, Nate took his feet down off the table and sat up. “I know what you mean. It’s like with the Firebird. When I first got her, man, she was just this sad hunk of junk, all rusted and barely running. But damn if I wasn’t proud of her.” He drummed his knuckles a few times against the surface of the table. “She was mine.”

Ro studied him closely, her brow wrinkling up. “I don’t get you, Nathan Sharp. You can be downright sweet when you want to be."

His eyebrows quirked a bit, both at the name "Sharp" instead of "Smith" and also at the fact that she'd called him "sweet" of all things, which to Ro was certainly high praise.

"And other times you’re all but insufferable.” There it was. Ro smirked when he gave her a hurt look and flicked the end of his nose as she’d seen Matt do about a hundred times. “I’m glad you and your brother found your way back to each other.”

With that, before Nate had so much as a chance to make some snarky comment about Matt finding a lot more than Nate when he stumbled back into the hunting game, Ro gathered up their plates and took them back to the kitchen. Instead he stared, somewhat shocked, at the camera feed just as one of the videos began blinking softly.

It had picked up movement.

He zoomed in on that feed in particular and squinted just as a figure darted across the screen. Someone was outside. And as more cameras picked up more movement, Nate realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that they weren’t alone.

He rose from his seat and glanced back the way that Ro had gone. If he shouted to alert her, there was no telling what the people outside would do, and he wanted to catch them then and there. So Nate quietly slipped back towards the kitchen, drawing his hunting knife and spinning it around his hand as he watched the entrances to the Roadhouse for any sign of someone trying to enter. When he made it to the doors of the kitchen, Ro was just coming back out with more cookies, and seeing him standing there with his knife drawn, she went to yelp only for Nate to raise a hand to quiet her.

Ro covered her mouth and nodded, eyes wide. Then she held her hands out, a question. Nate pointed towards the back door, which was where the figures had appeared to be heading, and then he held up three fingers. Ro’s eyes got even wider somehow, and she quickly dashed back into the kitchen. Nate wondered if she meant to hide in the pantry, but instead, she came out a moment later wielding a cast iron skillet like a sword.

Nate grinned, and he motioned for her to follow him down the hall.

Then together, they poised themselves on either side of the backdoor, their backs pressed to the wall. Nate all but held his breath as he noticed the handle start to turn and jump slightly as whoever was on the other side picked the lock. Ro sucked in a deep breath, pressing her lips together and tightening her grip on the pan.

The lock clicked. The door swung slowly open. And the next moment, a teenage girl in ripped jeans and an oversized Black Veil Brides t-shirt stuck her head in, not seeing the two adults hidden in the shadows to either side of her until she stepped all the way inside.

“You lose your key or something?” Nate asked, and the girl screamed and turned around.

She frowned at him, apparently still unable to see Ro who watched silently as Nate stepped out of the shadows. “You’re no witch.” Nate wrinkled up his nose at her. “What are you, twelve?”

“I’m _sixteen_ , actually,” the girl snapped back, crossing her skinny arms over her chest and sweeping her black fringe from her eyes. “And I might not be a witch yet, but I know enough to do this.” She swept her hand towards him, and a gust of wind blew the door shut behind him while also blowing Nate’s bangs into his eyes.

“Terrifying,” he muttered just before she stomped her foot on the ground, and the whole hallway erupted with a thunderclap that sent him flying back through the door, smashing it to pieces as he flew out the back and landed on his side in the dirt.

Right in between the other two witches.

Nate blinked up at them and, wheezing a bit, grinned. “Hello, ladies.”

Inside the Roadhouse, Ro stepped from her hiding place, holding the frying pan at eye-level even if she didn’t exactly plan to brain this child with it. “What are you doing leaving these terrible things in my roadhouse and attacking my friends?” she demanded instead as the girl turned to look at her.

“The other witches in my coven said if I drove this place out of business, they’d teach me some real magic.” She shrugged her shoulders with a wicked smirk on her face. “It’s nothing personal.” Then she drew a small pouch from her back pocket and turned to run further into the Roadhouse.

Ro screamed in agitation and ran after her while outside the other two witches slung spells at Nate as he ran, zig-zagging to dive behind the Firebird. From his hiding place, he popped the trunk and started digging around inside for something that would drive the witches away. Meanwhile, he could hear noises coming from inside the Roadhouse, crashing and shouts, and he wished he hadn’t left Ro alone.

But he barely had time to think of that before the witches were bearing down on him again. So he grabbed his shotgun and a few shells full of rocksalt. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would hurt like hell and maybe that was enough to convince them that the Roadhouse wasn’t worth their time.

Springing up over the trunk of the Firebird, he fired once at the first witch he saw and missed as she flung her hand at him and knocked him back again. Nate skidded through the dirt a few yards, scrapping skin from his arms and banging up his already bruised chest. Then, when he tried to focus his spinning gaze and fire the other shot, the gun in his hands turned red hot, and he was forced to drop it.

Before he could search for where he’d dropped his knife, the witches were looming over him. “What’s the matter, hunter? Not as indestructible as you thought you were?”

“You’ve got beautiful eyes,” the other said while fanning herself. “Once I cut them out of your skull, I’ve got just the spell I’d like to use them for.”

Nate put his hands up with another winning smile. “Now listen, ladies, there’s enough of me to go around.”

The first witch drew a long, wicked silver knife and batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh, yes. You can have his eyes, but I want his heart.”

Nate tried to get to his feet only for them to knock him down again. Another spell knocked him back a few more feet. They were basically playing with their food by then, Nate figured, and just as the first witch raised her knife into the air, the metal glinting in the moonlight, a white light flashed from the interior of the Roadhouse behind them, so bright and hot that it swept both of them off their feet.

The moment that the explosion had cleared, Nate sat up. “Ro!” He was met with silence.

The Roadhouse didn’t seem to be harmed. The explosion hadn’t so much as shattered a window, but the moment the witches recovered, they both disappeared in another thunderclap. Nate couldn’t care less where they were going. Whatever it was, it seemed to have scared them enough that he figured they wouldn’t be back any time soon. But Rosanna was still inside, and he couldn’t imagine what that blast might’ve done to her.

He staggered to his feet, his legs feeling like jelly, snatched up his knife from the grass, and half-ran, half-stumbled his way to the door of the Roadhouse he’d smashed through. When he fell inside, he saw, down the hall, Ro sitting on the floor with her pan still clutched in her hands, the young witch laying in a heap in front of her.

“Ro?” Nate asked and crawled across the floor to her. The main room of the bar seemed to have been the epicenter of the strange, magical blast. Chair and tables had been knocked over, and beer spewed across the hardwood. But Nate wasn’t worried about all that. “Ro!” He waved a hand in front of her eyes. “Rosanna, are you in there?”

She turned to him, her hair blasted back and her face a little pink like she’d been in the sun too long, but other than that, she seemed unharmed. “Oh, Nate! I was just going to come looking for you. This one,” she pointed towards the girl with the pan, “was quite a lot of trouble, but I don’t think she’ll be a problem for us anymore.”

Nate panted slightly, his head still spinning a bit from being knocked around so much. “Is she-?”

“Oh, goodness no!” Ro said, waving her hand in his face a bit as he dodged out of the way. “I think she just knocked herself out when her spell went haywire.”

“Is that what happened?” Nate asked, scratching his head. He’d never seen a witch’s spell, even a botched one, conjure that kind of a blinding light, and the other two had seemed scared stiff of it, they’d fled so quickly.

Ro nodded her head slowly and then reached over to pat Nate’s knee. “Why don’t we clean up a bit while she rests, and when she wakes up, you can drive her home? How does that sound?” Once again without giving Nate the chance to argue or agree, Ro got to her feet and started picking up overturned tables and chairs in the main room.

Nate stared down at the girl who really did seem to be sleeping perfectly peacefully and then back up at Ro, who was humming to herself as she tidied up. Blinking, Nate got to his feet. He was still tottering a bit as his knees felt weak, but he managed to get the taps to stop spewing beer before snagging a few towels from one of the cabinets and mopping up the mess left behind. “So, does this mean that I can stay?”

As they worked side-by-side, Ro gave Nate a look out of the corner of her eye and shrugged. “I suppose, as long as you help me sweep up here and there. I guess you can’t do much harm.” She pointed a finger at his nose then. “But don’t you so much as _look_ at my Jeep or I’ll have your head, you hear me?”

Nate gave her a small salute and a smile. “Loud and clear, El Pansino.” They turned back to their cleaning then, and by the time the sun was up, they’d gotten the Roadhouse mostly back in order. Rosanna had run off to make breakfast for them and the girl when she woke up. Content at feeling the warm rays falling against his arms and the back of his neck through the blinds, Nate slipped a few quarters into the jukebox in the corner to get some music going and thought that the Roadhouse wouldn’t be such a terrible place to live, at least for a short while.

And besides, he'd decided he liked Ro, whether or not she liked him. She certainly hadn’t ceased to surprise him yet, and he had a feeling, deep in his gut, that she never would.


End file.
